Slice of Life: Occupational Hazards
by The Black Sluggard
Summary: Sometimes it was easy to forget how many demons had needed slaying in order to reach this point... Life AU. Zombies.


**Author's Note:** This drops into "Quality of Life" just after Javier goes back to work, and before the close call with the junkie in "Life Goes On".

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><p>Medically, the term "regressive" was applied to a wide category of fluctuations in post-vital behavior, the most of which were actually fairly common and relatively innocuous.<p>

This fact was all too often forgotten in every day speech.

In common usage, the word "regression" was used for what were more appropriately termed "malignant regressive episodes", disorders defined by reversal of progress to a level below the minimum standards of safe control. Severe cases generally required rehospitalization until the patient was able to stabilize—or institutionalization if this was considered unlikely. The most alarming of these disorders was known as "acute catastrophic regression", the swift reversal to an onset-like state where aggression and decreased reasoning reduced patients to dangerous, hungry animals.

Malignant regression was proportionately rare amongst post-vitals, and fewer than two thousand catastrophic cases had been recorded since the early '70s, when data on the disease's progression and recovery began being collected reliably*. Of those numbers fewer still had fallen prey to it rapidly enough to pose a severe danger to public safety. Yet, as rare as it was, this form of regression often comprised the root of people's fear of post-vitals. For many, the simple fact that it _could_ happen was enough to justify that fear.

And there was vocal skepticism of the statistics themselves, some going so far as to accuse that malignant regression was more common than advocates claimed.

Outside of hate rhetoric, however, there were more neutral sources that held the same opinion, and even Kevin had to concede the validity of their arguments. Their position was based on the phenomenally high rates of post-vital suicide, speculating that for every case of malignant regression that was recorded, an unknown number went unreported when the victims chose to take their own lives.

There were plenty of other factors to account for those numbers, however.

Nearly all post-vitals lost family and friends due to their illness. Religious or cultural prejudice accounted for some. For others it was fear. Some simply found it too painful to watch their loved ones suffer through the madness of onset, or found the enormity of the changes afterward too much to handle. Fearing that rejection, some post-vitals went as far as to sever ties on purpose, preferring to lose on their own terms what they felt was bound to be taken from them anyway.

Javier had tried—and probably could have succeeded if Kevin had let him.

Onset and recovery added up to two-and-a-half to three months on average, stretching out to as many as seven in some cases. Business didn't stop just because their lives had been put on hold, rent didn't stop coming due. Some never quite bounced back from all those missing months, losing their homes and livelihood on top of everything else. One way or another, too many found no place left for them but the release homes—institutions pejoratively known as "corpse houses".

Once they were down, a post-vital's uncertain position in society only made it that much harder to get back up.

Even those who didn't think of themselves as prejudiced often believed that allowing post-vitals to perform certain jobs was controversial. Education, childcare, medicine, military, emergency services...law enforcement. While Javier had been able to _keep_ his place at the 12th, as he was now he would never have been accepted into the academy. There had even been whispers, prior to his reinstatement, that he should be transferred to another department—Robbery, Arson, _Traffic_. Homicide, the argument ran, required too much contact with sensitive stimuli. Which was the politically correct way of phrasing things, but no less insulting when what it implied was that Javier couldn't be trusted to control himself in the presence of fresh blood or dead bodies.

And Kevin knew that what hurt Javier the most about those doubts was that, while heavily exaggerated, behind them was an unpleasant truth.

He still vividly remembered that first crime scene after his partner's return. Remembered watching Javier's subtle awareness of every wary glance that was subtly watching _him_. Remembered the straight-stiff lines of Javier's shoulders and back and, as they entered, the greedy flare of his nostrils before his breathing ceased entirely.

His partner might not care whether or not he passed for vital, but Kevin knew he _did_ care about his reputation. Detective Esposito was a good man and a good cop, and as far as was Javier concerned, as long as he could sell himself as the _same_ man to the rest of the department, the continuing truth of that would sell itself. Calling attention to the changes that had taken place messed with that sense of continuity. With so many eyes on him, Javier wouldn't have done something so noticeable as hold his breath like that without a reason. And Kevin had known with an uncomfortable degree of certainty what that reason was.

Javier had held his breath for fear he might betray himself in worse ways if he didn't.

In spite of that tense start, that first day Javier had maintained a grip on himself―admirably, Kevin would have said, though it was a difficult thing to judge from the outside. But while Kevin was aware of that bizarre rigidness in his partner's posture—a tension that had practically hummed the entire time they were on the scene—and Javier's careful economy of breath, he doubted many others would have noticed. Javier had stayed visibly focused on the case and on the evidence and the witnesses...

He had even cracked a few jokes at Castle's expense like it was easy.

It wasn't until later, when they stepped outside and it was just the two of them, that Javier had let himself fall apart just a little. The tenseness had bled away almost the moment the door closed behind them, his hands shaking at his sides. Leaning against the wall with his eyes squeezed shut, Javier had drawn a deep breath of filthy air to scrub the smell of blood from his lungs. A soft moan escaped his throat...a sound Kevin had chosen to interpret as one of relief, just as he had blamed his own sudden chill on the wind cutting through the alley.

When Javier finally opened his eyes, though, he had stared ahead for several moments, blinking with something like faint surprise.

From the moment he'd been released Javier had thrown nearly everything he had left into his requalification. Hours spent at the gun range, getting used to firing his weapon again with his highly sensitive hearing. Hours spent sparring with him or with Beckett, carefully testing himself for any defects in his reflexes—or in his control. Kevin knew he'd even gone as far as to schedule a few sessions with Waters prior to the department psych-eval—which, knowing his partner's feelings about the woman, had made it impossible to doubt Javier's resolve. Fully committed to the hope that something meaningful could be salvaged from the wreckage of his old life, willing even to make that sacrifice to his pride when those tattered remains were nearly all he had.

Standing in that alley, Kevin had been struck by the realization that, until that moment Javier hadn't really been sure he could do it. Not for certain. Javier had walked through that door prepared for it to mean the end of his career. After all that effort, after all that hope—after Kevin had been so relieved to have him _back_—in his partner's mind it had still been a gamble...

But a gamble that had ultimately, mercifully paid off in the end.

Javier had turned to look at him and Kevin had seen the beginnings of a smile on his lips, the look in his eye oddly determined. When he stood away from the wall it was with a confidence in his posture even Kevin hadn't realized was missing. It was like planets falling into alignment, it was _everything_, and Kevin had found himself releasing a breath of his own, one he hadn't even realized he had been holding.

Detective Esposito was back, and if _he_ believed he could do this God help anyone who tried to tell him otherwise.

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><p><em>*The federal laws passed in 1972 simply established the identity of post-vitals as legally alive. By logical extension the ending of their lives came to fall under definitions like murder and suicide. Prior to this, the practice of post-vital euthanasia (sometimes colloquialized as "disposal of remains") made it difficult to gather reliable data on recovery and regression.<em>  
><em>IHN is still classified as a "terminal" illness, however, and elective euthanasia is still legal in any state where physician assisted suicide is also legal.<em>  
><em>Which is a longer list the Life 'verse than in ours, but New York isn't on it in either one.<em>


End file.
